I had that with everything backed up from iCloud to my SSD but that will no longer store so hence the questions.
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iMac and remove photos from iCloud
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HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
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- 8 bay: 1823xs+
- 12 bay: DS3622xs+
- 8 bay: DS1821+ (lots of places offer this one bare (no drives) for $999.99)
- 12 bay: DS2422+ (lots of places offer this one bare for $1799.99)
In other words, you could:
- Set all Macs in the house to automatically backup to the Synology Time Machine store
- Also choose 1 big local drive as a Time Machine backup too. Mac will automatically switch between Synology and this local one every hour.
- 1 more big local drive as a TM backup to store offsite.
- Regularly rotate the offsite HDD with the onsite HDD so the offsite backup is fresh. I do this monthly, storing the offsite in a Bank Safe Deposit box.
If you feel like you would never fill 8 bays, they make:
- 6 bay units: DS1621+ or DS620slim
- 5 bay: DS1522+
- 4 bay: DS923+ or DS423+
Synology is not the only NAS available. Other people swear by other brands like QNAP and similar. I'm a bit biased by using Synology for the last decade+. It "just works" fine for my purposes.
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Thank you so much for your time tonight. Everything you have said has helped me better understand. Time to have a think.
HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
Time to think AND dig into the details. Take some time to learn about NAS and RAID storage, which is used on NAS systems. If you go Synology, learn about Synology's own RAID system called SHR. IMO: it's nicer than traditional RAID in that it has that growth flexibility by swapping in bigger drives over time and readily working with drives of various sizes.
Watch some YouTube videos about them. Hop on YouTube and do a search for Synology for Macs and watch many videos that shows them working with Mac.
Read and watch reviews of them. Etc. There's TONS of information online.
These are basically dedicated computers focused on huge storage. They are not Macs or PCs but their own things. Invest the time to dig in and gain an understanding of them, what they can do, etc.
Watch some YouTube videos about them. Hop on YouTube and do a search for Synology for Macs and watch many videos that shows them working with Mac.
Read and watch reviews of them. Etc. There's TONS of information online.
These are basically dedicated computers focused on huge storage. They are not Macs or PCs but their own things. Invest the time to dig in and gain an understanding of them, what they can do, etc.
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I will do - thank you again for your help and time. Really interesting area to learn about.
What we need is a last accessed attribute. Then it would be easy to find anything not looked at in the last X days and move it to off-machine storage, whether that was a NAS or just a detached hard drive.
If you are going to do a server, a 2012 or 2014 Mac mini is more than enough CPU power and you can put a couple terabytes of storage inside the case. External cases add even more capacity.
As others have mentioned you need a backup for your archive which is probably just a USB 3 external drive.
By the way, my home server is a 2014 mini with 1.5 TB of internal storage and a 2 TB external drive. It's running an up to date Linux distribution, but it was running Monterey until a few months ago. That worked mostly fine too excepting some odd permissions problems.
Samba under Linux has to be configured while walking widdershins during a full moon until the pentagram auto-ignites, but once it is working it does well.
If you are going to do a server, a 2012 or 2014 Mac mini is more than enough CPU power and you can put a couple terabytes of storage inside the case. External cases add even more capacity.
As others have mentioned you need a backup for your archive which is probably just a USB 3 external drive.
By the way, my home server is a 2014 mini with 1.5 TB of internal storage and a 2 TB external drive. It's running an up to date Linux distribution, but it was running Monterey until a few months ago. That worked mostly fine too excepting some odd permissions problems.
Samba under Linux has to be configured while walking widdershins during a full moon until the pentagram auto-ignites, but once it is working it does well.
You can increase your iCloud storage to 8TB for $30/month. Or all the way up to 14TB for a hefty $60/month.
If I were looking at $1000+ NAS devices as alternatives, I would upgrade iCloud storage to 8TB, and hope that Apple lowers prices in several years.
I used to run NAS devices and other backup setups and having iCloud (with Advanced Data Protection enabled on my iCloud account) is just so much more convenient than dealing with the headache of maintaining the hardware and the sync problem that it is worth the money to not have to think about it. I do ensure that my main Mac downloads all photos locally and is backed up regularly with Time Machine to two different drives. This way I have varied backups of my photos across iCloud, Mac, and Time Machine without being a hostage to iCloud or Apple. I'm about to fill my 2TB iCloud storage and will bump up to 4TB within a few months.
If I were looking at $1000+ NAS devices as alternatives, I would upgrade iCloud storage to 8TB, and hope that Apple lowers prices in several years.
I used to run NAS devices and other backup setups and having iCloud (with Advanced Data Protection enabled on my iCloud account) is just so much more convenient than dealing with the headache of maintaining the hardware and the sync problem that it is worth the money to not have to think about it. I do ensure that my main Mac downloads all photos locally and is backed up regularly with Time Machine to two different drives. This way I have varied backups of my photos across iCloud, Mac, and Time Machine without being a hostage to iCloud or Apple. I'm about to fill my 2TB iCloud storage and will bump up to 4TB within a few months.
Would my iMac not be the same as your mini?What we need is a last accessed attribute. Then it would be easy to find anything not looked at in the last X days and move it to off-machine storage, whether that was a NAS or just a detached hard drive.
If you are going to do a server, a 2012 or 2014 Mac mini is more than enough CPU power and you can put a couple terabytes of storage inside the case. External cases add even more capacity.
As others have mentioned you need a backup for your archive which is probably just a USB 3 external drive.
By the way, my home server is a 2014 mini with 1.5 TB of internal storage and a 2 TB external drive. It's running an up to date Linux distribution, but it was running Monterey until a few months ago. That worked mostly fine too excepting some odd permissions problems.
Samba under Linux has to be configured while walking widdershins during a full moon until the pentagram auto-ignites, but once it is working it does well.
While upgrading your iCloud to a higher tier think of building your own homelab and slowly copy or move your library to it. You can also set it up that you can securely access your server and data remotely plenty of tutorials over on YouTube. For the iCloud Photos alternative on a server I could think of NextCloud it's free and open source they also provide an iOS app I’m sure there are others that are also free and open source.
These videos will give you an idea on what you need to start on a low budget.
These videos will give you an idea on what you need to start on a low budget.
I prefer to compartmentalize my homelab content. If you're similar, I would recommend NextCloud for general document storage, and something like Immich for your photos. Immich is open source (and free, but you can support them if you'd like) and under active development. It has some nice features. I personally used it to get my wife away from Google Photos.
I don’t have a solution, only an opinion.
To use up 2TB of storage is quite something! Your solution to dealing with this is going to be financial, you going to continually buy more hardware or iCloud data.
The equivalent In Real Life is that you keep paying for more garages to store things that you refuse to throw away. You end up with lots of garages and lock ups that you NEVER EVER visit.
It’s the same with your video footage. Assuming your recording everything at the highest 4K 60fps rate, there will be no end to your storage needs and no end to the expenses incurred. Data hoarding is very expensive with Apple.
Consider dropping your footage into iMovie, editing it into something rich and exciting and exporting it. Then delete your original footage, it’ll shrink by 90% in file size.
That way you get to enjoy all of the convenience features that iCloud brings.
To use up 2TB of storage is quite something! Your solution to dealing with this is going to be financial, you going to continually buy more hardware or iCloud data.
The equivalent In Real Life is that you keep paying for more garages to store things that you refuse to throw away. You end up with lots of garages and lock ups that you NEVER EVER visit.
It’s the same with your video footage. Assuming your recording everything at the highest 4K 60fps rate, there will be no end to your storage needs and no end to the expenses incurred. Data hoarding is very expensive with Apple.
Consider dropping your footage into iMovie, editing it into something rich and exciting and exporting it. Then delete your original footage, it’ll shrink by 90% in file size.
That way you get to enjoy all of the convenience features that iCloud brings.
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100% this is a brilliant solution and I can edit. Time is the issue at the moment. I edit some but need to do more. Great answer.
Time is a very expensive commodity, that’s for sure.
I make videos quite a bit. I’ve made a rule for myself now which hinders and helps. Only shoot video on a day when you can whack it into iMovie and favouritise (verb!) each of the clips.
My experience tells me that if I can’t do it the same day, I’ll never get around to it.
So I take a lot less video than I did but the high quality means I’m keen to watch it over and over.
Are these all personal photos? Do they need to be synced and stored on the cloud? The numbers suggest you’re a professional or hobbyist photographer with some serious camera tech and storage requirements from your photo shoots. Maybe investing in some at home or office serious bulk storage HDDs or network attached solution for your photos shoots to be kept on, reliably and offline. Then your precious / personal family and life photos, keep them on iCloud so that they’re near and close when you wish to view them. Would a solution like that work for you?